Democracy against hegemony

By Samir Amin, al-Ahram (Cairo), #426, 28 April 1999

The 28 March issue of the New York Times contains an informative
article on US political strategy. Its content is summed up by an
eloquent image that takes up one page of the publication: a boxing
glove in the colours of the American flag, accompanied by the
following caption: What the world needs now—for globalisation
to work, America can't be afraid to act like the almighty
superpower that it is. The reason for the announced punches is
elucidated in these terms: The hidden hand of the market will never
work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without
McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that
keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies is called
the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. The writer of these
words is not a provocative joker, but none other than Thomas Friedman,
Madeleine Albright's adviser.

We are very far, here, from the unifying discourse spouted by
fashionable economists on the self-regulating market as a guarantor of
peace. The American ruling class knows that economics are political,
and that it is relations of power—including military
power—that command the market. There will be no global
market without an American military empire, they say—for the
above-mentioned article is but one amongst hundreds. This brutal
frankness is no doubt possible over there because the media are
sufficiently controlled for the government's strategic objective
never to be subject to debate; freedom of expression—a freedom
which often reaches the burlesque—applies only to matters
involving individuals and, beyond them, to conflicts within the ruling
class, rendered perfectly opaque in these conditions. There is no
political force capable of combating the system and enlightening a
public manipulated with such consummate ease.

More curious is the silence of the European powers and some others
who, pretending not to read the press on the other side of the
Atlantic (I dare not think they have no idea what it says), forbid
their adversaries from hinting at the very existence of
Washington's global strategy, falling back instead on facile
accusations that these opponents harbour a conspiratorial view
of history, or even that they are behaving like visionaries who see
the shadow of the Great Satan around every corner.

And yet the strategy in question is quite limpid. The US is less
convinced than its allies, so it would seem, of the virtues of
competition and fair play—virtues, incidentally, which it
violates with impunity every time its interests are at stake (cf. the
banana wars among many other instances). Washington knows that,
without its military hegemony, America cannot force the world to
finance its savings deficit, which is the condition for the artificial
maintenance of its economic position.

The instrument of choice in the imposition of this hegemony is
therefore military, as the highest US authorities never tire of
repeating. This hegemony, which in turn guarantees that of the Triad
(US-Canada; Japan; Western Europe) over the global system, would
therefore demand that the US's allies accept to navigate in its
wake. The UK, Germany and Japan have put forth no objections, not even
cultural ones. But the speeches European politicians feed their
audiences—with respect to Europe's economic
power—thereby lose any real significance. By placing itself
exclusively on the terrain of mercantile disputes, with no project of
its own, Europe is beaten from the start. Washington knows this well.

The weapon against the US's global strategy is a process of
globalisation which must be at once multipolar, democratic (at least
potentially), and negotiated. The margin of autonomy that this allows
is the only means of correctly addressing fundamental social problems,
which differ due to the unequal development of markets, and is by the
same token the condition for democracy to take root seriously, since
it gives a better chance to demilitarisation, security and peace. In
contrast, American hegemony, in association with neoliberalism, has so
far only produced chaos, the multiplication of conflicts and
large-scale military intervention. This, after all, was only to be
expected.

The principal tool in the service of Washington's chosen strategy
is NATO -- hence its ability to survive the collapse of the adversary
that was its raison d'etre. Today, NATO speaks in the name of the
international community, thereby expressing its contempt for
the democratic principle that governs this community through the
UN. In debates conducted in the US on the global strategy we are
discussing, human rights or democracy are mentioned only rarely. They
are invoked, in fact, only when this is useful for the functioning of
this same global strategy, which explains the blinding cynicism and
systematic use of double standards in evidence.

There is no question of intervening in favour of democracy in
Afghanistan or in the Gulf, for example, no more than there has ever
been any question of hampering Mobutu yesterday, Savimbi today, and
many others tomorrow. People's rights are sacred in certain cases
(Kosovo today, perhaps Tibet tomorrow), and forgotten in others
(Palestine, Turkish Kurdistan, Cyprus, the Serbs of Krajima, expelled
at gunpoint by the Croatian regime, etc.).

Even the terrible genocide in Rwanda gave rise to no serious
investigation into the responsibility of diplomats who had supported
the governments that were openly advocating it. Certainly, the
despicable behaviour of certain regimes—like those of Saddam
Hussein or Milosevic—makes the task easier by offering pretexts
that are easy to exploit. But the complete silence that meets other
cases deprives the discourse of democracy and people's rights of
any measure of credibility. It would be impossible to do a greater
disservice to the fundamental requirements of the fight for democracy
and human respect, without which no progress is possible.

The avowed goal of the US's strategy is not to tolerate the
existence of any powers capable of resisting Washington's orders,
and therefore to seek to dismantle all those countries deemed too
big, as well as to create the largest possible number of pawn
states—easy prey for the establishment of American bases
guaranteeing their protection. Only one state has the right to
be big: the United States, as its two last presidents have said
explicitly. The method put into practice, however, is not limited to
wielding the bludgeon and manipulating the media. It attempts to
enclose people in immediate and unacceptable alternatives: bowing to
oppression, disappearing, placing themselves under the US
protectorate. For this to take place, it is necessary to draw a veil
of silence over the policies that have created the tragedy. For
example, we may cite the rapid recognition of the states of the former
Yugoslavia, with no concern for preparing them by regulating the fate
of the concerned peoples in a democratic manner.

Alignment with the strategy of the US and its subaltern NATO allies
has dramatic consequences. The UN is about to succumb to the fate of
the League of Nations. Clearly—and fortunately—American
society is not that of Nazi Germany, but for the decision-makers in
Washington, like those of Berlin before them, force has been
established as a supreme principle, to the complete detriment of
international law, for which the dominant discourse has substituted an
odd right of intervention, disturbingly reminiscent of the
mission civilisatrice of 19th-century imperialism.

The struggle for democracy will remain completely ineffective if it is
accompanied by submission to American hegemonism. The struggle for
democracy is indissociable from the fight against Washington's
hegemony.